Doomsday Preppers Diary – Solutions not Problems

We are back again with another episode of Doomsday Preppers Diary with our two writers Cornelia and Pat. Each week we watch Doomsday Preppers and provide a little commentary on the episode and how each prepper is portrayed for fun. Last week’s episode was excellent with three preppers and a ton of good ideas. This week has two preppers Doug and Jeff. The previews look exciting so let’s dive in.

Doug lives on 50 acres of land in Southeast Tennessee with his wife and teenage daughter. He runs his own stone quarry business and people around Tennessee have taken to calling him the “Rockman.” What they don’t realize is that Doug is also planning to use those rocks as protection during a coming economic collapse. He believes such a collapse will cause local businesses to go bankrupt, resulting in chaos and looting. Doug has been prepping for a couple of years and has even begun to build his own underground bunker equipped with two hatches and an N.B.C. air scrubber.

CA: Rockman?

Rockman is preparing for an economic collapse which he feels could cause the country to fall into chaos and looting as people come from the cities into the country to try and take what isn’t theirs. Rockman has worked on preparing to have money to support him after an economic collapse and the method he has chosen is to look through all silver dollars for Pre-1965 coins. The half dollars minted prior to 1970 have more silver than today’s coins. Rockman spends hours each week “roll hunting” as he describes it, looking for the coins that will be able to be bartered.

PH: After seeing this, everybody is going to run to the bank tomorrow and get lots of pre-1965 silver.

CA: His mane is longer than the horses he raises.

Rockman is also burying a shipping container to be used as a secure bunker on his land. The bunker will be placed in on a concrete footing and will be completely covered in concrete when it is all finished. Rockman has 2 gallons per day set aside in his bunker and has even installed a septic tank so that waste removal is taken care of in the bunker.

CA: He is showing the 8’ x 8’ master bedroom. Do you really call it a master? 2 gallons per day is not enough to take a normal shower like we have gotten used to. Stinky will be “in” after doomsday.

Rockman has stored hidden caches around his property and he has buried them under flat rocks. He is using the rocks on his property as a second line of defense against intruders and he demonstrates how he can start a rock-slide easily to fend off attackers.

CA: I love rocks, but I love guns, too

PH: I am going to cut down trees to block the roads to our place. I guess I better ask the neighbors if it’s OK first.

CA: Rockman is Pat’s “man crush”.

PH: Cornelia wishes her hair was as shiny as Rockman’s hair.

Rockman has invested heavily in Wise Foods and has a year’s worth of food for each person in his bunker. He keeps the food stored in pails from Wise that hold 52 servings worth of food each.

PH: This looks like a great place for a product placement, oh wait. Hey, I have an idea. Wise should construct those pails out of ballistic Kevlar and make them stack-able like Lego’s. That way your food stores could double as your retreat walls!

Ines is Rockmans foreman and friend and they have arranged for Ines’ family to move into the bunker with Rockman if the economy collapses as he fears. That will bring the total to 7 in the shipping container.

CA: Ines looks like a good man.

Rockman and Ines have an additional plan for security on their retreat. They are using large boulders to build fortified pill boxes on the corners of their property to repel anyone who is trying to attack them.

PH: Wow, they are making pill boxes! If only we had a ton of rocks like that on our property. And a forklift, and a bobcat and a foreman who knows what he is doing.

CA: Can zombies hot-wire and drive a Bobcat?

Practical Preppers give them a decent score of 13 months to live, but c’mon! He has an underground bunker, he can barricade his road with tons of rocks and he has a septic tank; not to mention all of those cool pails of Wise foods…

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OK, next up is Jeff. Jeff Flanningham is a bachelor living in rural Wisconsin. He has been divorced for four years and currently spends his time reconstructing a decommissioned underground nuclear missile facility. A few times every month, Jeff drives 14 hours with his friends and works on the silo. Once the country suffers an economic collapse, he plans to turn his silo into an underground community for like-minded preppers. But before the economy completely collapses, he hopes to find a wife that will accept and support his prepping lifestyle.

PH: The start of this episode has me worried. They are making everything ominous like Jeff is a serial killer. Is this Doomsday Preppers or Saw 128?

CA: Wow, his silo is a real fixer upper. Did Jeff do all that snazzy graffiti himself?

PH: Jeff is also preparing for economic collapse and I think several of the last preppers had the same reason for their concern. Coincidence? I think not!

Jeff’s plan for the economic collapse is to drive to his silo from his home that is over 800 miles away. His silo is out in the middle of nowhere.

PH: Hope you have some spare gas and you get a head start Jeff.

Jeff’s friends come out with him 4 times a year to help him work on the silo and get it restored so that it will be livable again. They also bring truckloads of supplies to refurbish the bunker.

CA: I bet you they just party in the missile silo and spray paint the walls from the looks of it.

As part of Jeff’s security plan he and two friends who have come out to the site with him are working on security options for his retreat. They improvise a propane powered flame thrower that spans a hallway to keep intruders out. Jeff’s fear is that the confined spaces and concrete will be a problem with ricochet and bullets.

PH: That flame thrower is pretty nice, but it won’t last long especially when you are shooting a flame 6 feet long. The bad guys would only have to wait a little while. Or they could do the limbo and go under it.

CA: Well, he could cook weenies with it while he is holding off the zombie army.

Jeff’s other objective this week at the silo is to meet a woman who he can share all of this with so he has arranged 3 dates on the same evening with 3 separate women he met though an online dating service. Essentially Jeff needs to find the perfect woman who will not only accept his lifestyle but want to live in the bunker with him.

PH: I have to say they do a good job on the commercials making that lasagna look tasty. It’s making me hungry.

CA: All you care about is eating, but the Wise Food pails do come in handy after the food is gone; doubles nicely as a chamber pot.

Jeff is getting ready for his dates and the narrator says that he hasn’t been dating for 6 years. His first date is a woman named Stephanie who seems very nice. I don’t know if they edited the footage like this on purpose but it looks like Jeff sits down and the first thing out of his mouth are questions about Stephanie’s prepping skills.

Jeff: Are you out-doorsy?

Stephanie: Sure, I love the outdoors.

Jeff: Are you worried about the coming financial collapse?

Stephanie: (deer in headlights expression) No, I don’t think it would ever get that bad. I am optimistic…(nervous smile)

Jeff: Do you have any survival skills?

Stephanie: (deer in headlights again) Not really.

Jeff: I live underground in a missile silo.

Stephanie to camera: Jeff seems paranoid, but “interesting”.

CA: Interesting is code for “crazy”.

PH: That was painful to watch and I feel bad for Stephanie.

Jeff meets his second date a woman named Laura. Laura is a hunter and was a combat medic. She can also quilt and doesn’t blink twice about the idea of living in a bunker.

CA: He triple stacked his dates. Jerk.

PH: Wow, all of that and she didn’t run away or even look at you crosswise when you mentioned the bunker. She is either desperate or his perfect match. Maybe both.

The last woman is named Serle and right off the bat Jeff asks her if she can shoot. Serle was formerly in the Navy and knows how to shoot “pretty well”. Jeff goes into the specifics of his silo and plans to retreat underground while Serle watches him.

CA: Can’t tell if she is intrigued by the silo or is looking elegantly displeased.

PH: Lesson learned from this episode: I don’t want to have to date in my forties. I love my wife.

Jeff seems to have good things to say about all of the women he dated. After all of the dates, Jeff chooses one to call back and ask for a second date.

PH: I think it will be Laura or Serle since they have experience and Stephanie had none. Not to mention she was probably the least optimistic on his plans.

The phone is ringing and we find out that Jeff has called Stephanie.

PH: What? He went with her because she is the cutest to him out of the 3. No other reason.

Jeff is asking her on a second date and the call is on speaker phone. When he asks Stephanie, she pauses for a good 3 seconds and then agrees to meet him again.

CA: I think he is looking to train a newbie so he seems smarter.

Another commercial break for Wise Foods.

CA: More Wise Foods; I am chewing on the rug now. Those commercials work!

Stephanie agrees to meet Jeff for a tour of his silo at an intersection out on the plains. When Jeff arrives he tells her that due to security concerns and OPSEC he would like to blindfold her. Stephanie is understandably not comfortable with the blindfold but eventually agrees.

PH: This just took awkward to a whole new level and I am starting to feel worse for Stephanie. The only reason she is going along is because Jeff has a camera crew with him. Gives new meaning to blind date.

CA: I would kill my daughters if they grow up, meet a strange man, and let him blindfold and drive them to his missile silo. This girl needs to watch “Silence of the Lambs”.

They arrive at the silo and begin going down into the bunker complex. Stephanie gets her first look at where Jeff wants to live and doesn’t seem very impressed at all.

CA: I guess Jeff never thought that he should take her to dinner and a movie first.

Jeff shows her the “big surprise” and that is the actual silo where the missile was stored. The chamber is 70 feet deep and has partially filled over the years with an estimated 1.4 million gallons of water which the narrator says is enough to fill two Olympic swimming pools that Jeff plans to use for his bunker. The only problem is getting the rainwater.

PH: How did they do the math on that? OK, the diameter of a circle is…

Jeff has to rappel down to the water and he gets Stephanie to help him on belay at the top.

PH: All that buildup for a Gatorade jug of water? He has to come up with something better than that. Of course it would help you kill time.

CA: Now he is filtering water for her. Romantic.

The assessment from the Practical Preppers only gives Jeff 2 months. In fairness to the judges, Jeff did not have any food storage, no garden, no livestock and no backup power. Actually, I am not sure what he has been doing with his bunker for 6 years because we didn’t see anything that looked even remotely finished. He does have an amazing advantage in the silo, he just needs some more work apparently.

The update for Jeff is that he is still single and never dated Stephanie again. Who saw that coming?

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